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DPRK WNET Wide Angle Film

An unidentified woman lies dead on a riverbed bordering North Korea and China.

For ten months in 2007 and 2008, three intrepid South Korean journalists lived undercover among North Korean defectors in China. They covertly documented the experiences of a group of North Koreans who, like 100,000 or more over the past decade, have crossed the waters of the Tumen and Yalu Rivers into northeast China. THIRTEEN/WNET.ORG's Wide Angle brings to Asia Society the resulting film, Crossing Heaven's Border, a harrowing story of intrigue and escape, and a unique piece of investigative journalism. Embedding themselves in an underground smuggling network, the reporters follow a group of defectors ' including a 19-year-old aspiring actress and a young boy seeking to be reunited with his mother ' on the grueling and dangerous 3000-mile journey down through China and Southeast Asia in the hopes of eventually making it to safety in South Korea. The film also profiles a defector living in China as she plans a brazen escape to South Korea using a fake passport in order to seek medical assistance for her six-year-old son, who suffers from cerebral palsy. North Korea's arrest and conviction of journalists American Laura Ling and Euna Lee, and the regime's renewed nuclear ambitions have again placed the DPRK prominently in the headlines. Journalist Bob Woodruff, professor Katherine Moon, and activist Steven Kim will be joined in conversation by Asia Society's John Delury to discuss the plight of North Koreans in China, what their experiences tell us about life back in North Korea, and the role journalists are playing in exposing one of the world's most opaque regimes. Crossing Heaven's Border premieres on PBS Wednesday, July 1 at 10 p.m. Wide Angle is a production of THIRTEEN for WNET.ORG

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